Your Sunday night news from Detroit (11/08)
Crossposted to darksumomo
Featured Story
New Geography: Detroit: Urban Laboratory and the New American Frontier
by Aaron M. Renn
The troubles of Detroit are well-publicized. Its economy is in free fall, people are streaming for the exits, it has the worst racial polarization and city-suburb divide in America, its government is feckless and corrupt (though I should hasten to add that new Mayor Bing seems like a basically good guy and we ought to give him a chance), and its civic boosters, even ones that are extremely knowledgeable, refuse to acknowledge the depth of the problems, instead ginning up stats and anecdotes to prove all is not so bad.
But as with Youngstown, one thing this massive failure has made possible is ability to come up with radical ideas for the city, and potentially to even implement some of them. Places like Flint and Youngstown might be attracting new ideas and moving forward, but it is big cities that inspire the big, audacious dreams. And that is Detroit. Its size, scale, and powerful brand image are attracting not just the region’s but the world’s attention. It may just be that some of the most important urban innovations in 21st century America end up coming not from Portland or New York, but places like Youngstown and, yes, Detroit.
Let’s refresh with this image showing the scale of the challenge in the city of Detroit proper:
Hat/tip to nebrisfor sending me the above story.
Renn also has a companion article on Shareable: Detroit, New Frontier.
Detroit has become a byword for extreme urban contraction.
Yet as the population, industry, and built environment of the city of Detroit have collapsed, Detroit’s urban footprint has continued to expand. In Detroit, even the dead are sprawling, as families disinter bodies from urban cemeteries to rebury them in the suburbs. Is there any greater sign of both the physical and psychological abandonment of the city?
Michigan News
Detroit Free Press: U.S. Senate approves unemployment extension
By TODD SPANGLER
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
WASHINGTON -- The U.S. Senate voted unanimously tonight to extend unemployment benefits by as much as 14 weeks to out-of-work Americans, including about 100,000 Michiganders who have exhausted their jobless benefits or would do so by year’s end.
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Nowhere is the need being felt as greatly as in Michigan, which at 15.3% had the highest unemployment rate in the country in September.
Said Sen. Debbie Stabenow, Michigan Democrat, “Families throughout the state and across the country are struggling to put food on the table as many cope with finding new jobs. … This extension of unemployment insurance not only provides support when it is needed most, it is one of the fastest, most effective ways to stimulate our economy.”
Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency projected earlier this year that 99,000 recipients would exhaust their benefits -- including up to 26 weeks of regular benefits, 33 weeks of Congress’ first emergency extension and 20 weeks of the state’s extended benefits program -- between May and the end of the year.
Detroit Free Press: Welfare workers say they're overwhelmed by growing need
BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF
FREE PRESS LANSING BUREAU CHIEF
LANSING -- State welfare workers are threatened by angry clients and struggle with lax security, troublesome computers and inadequate phone systems, a House committee was told Wednesday.
Seven caseworkers from the Department of Human Services (DHS) testified that they are swamped by a huge surge in caseloads, as the state's job losses leave formerly middle-class families needing help with food, cash and medical care.
The workers told the House Committee on Human Services that DHS office lobbies are routinely crammed with clients, causing short tempers and even threats against them.
Detroit Free Press: U.S. stimulus money lights a fire that's warming the state
BY TODD SPANGLER
FREE PRESS WASHINGTON STAFF
Just in time for winter, that big batch of federal money -- $243 million for Michigan over three years -- to help people with lower incomes cut heating and cooling bills is finally starting to flow.
Those funds to improve home insulation also were supposed to have begun putting hundreds of people in the weatherization industry to work by now. But Congress' initial plan to have contracts begin in April was delayed while federally mandated wage rates were set for contractors.
That took months -- time during which Michigan kept struggling with double-digit unemployment.
Detroit Free Press: Michigan to get $16.7M grant for teachers
By PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Michigan will receive a $16.7-million grant jointly from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, it was announced today.
The grants will provide mentoring and training for 240 math and science teachers. The teachers will agree to spend their first five years of teaching in high need areas such as urban school districts.
Detroit Free Press: State aid for schools gets House boost
BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF and LORI HIGGINS
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
Deep cuts in state aid to schools stirred action Thursday, as the House voted 74-29 to restore $184 million using federal stimulus money set aside for fiscal year 2011.
That would increase state aid to schools by about $115 per pupil more than the new budget signed last week by Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
Majority Republicans in the Senate oppose the idea, though Granholm said she would back it.
Detroit Free Press: 55 Michigan troopers to be rehired
BY CHRIS CHRISTOFF
FREE PRESS LANSING BUREAU
LANSING - Fifty-five laid-off Michigan State Police troopers will be rehired after all.
State budget director Bob Emerson said the department was given the go-ahead today to hire the troopers, who were among some 100 rookie troopers laid off July 1 in a cost-saving move by Gov. Jennifer Granholm.
Detroit Free Press: Granholm is OK with leaving office
Dawson Bell and Chris Christoff contributed to this week's Poli-Bites.
For Gov. Jennifer Granholm, relief is just an election away.
"It is liberating that I am term-limited and not running. I don't have to worry," Granholm said Saturday on "Michigan Matters," on WWJ-TV (Channel 62).
When host Carol Cain asked about the state's prospects, Granholm quipped, "I'm not going to say, 'We'll be blown away.' "
Detroit Free Press: Statewide news
COMPILED FROM REPORTS BY BEN SCHMITT, KATHLEEN GRAY, ROBIN ERB
Vice President Joe Biden is to be in Detroit on Monday to raise money for the Michigan Democratic Party.
U.S. Reps. Gary Peters, D-Bloomfield Township, and Mark Schauer, D-Battle Creek, are to host the breakfast fund-raiser. Tickets for the event at the MGM Grand Hotel are $1,000 per person or $5,000 for a VIP reception.
State and national Republicans are targeting the two freshmen lawmakers. But the two have amassed the biggest war chests of Michigan's 15 members of Congress.
Detroit Free Press: Can these students' inventions save Michigan?
BY ROBIN ERB
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
We've all got them -- those ideas that we know, just know, would make a fortune if we could get them to a store shelf.
Now, some University of Michigan students are hoping to tap into that genius. MPowered Entrepreneurship is challenging students to make their pitches -- whether for ideas they've mulled for years or an unexpected flash of brilliance.
"It's 'Hey, you're waking up at 3 a.m. with an idea. What is it?' " said MPowered president Lauren Leland, 20, of West Bloomfield.
The spiels range from the intriguing (sidewalks that capture kinetic energy from pedestrians) to the sensible (disposable dishrags for dorm rooms) to the silly (a robot clock that pummels you awake).
Michigan Business
Detroit Free Press: Plenty of reasons to temper our optimism
BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
November began with a daily dose of hope for greater Detroit:
• Monday, Ford Motor Co. posted a $1-billion third-quarter profit, making money on its core North American operations after 17 consecutive quarterly losses.
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• Wednesday, Chrysler Group emerged from a 5-month hibernation with CEO Sergio Marchionne flashing supremo confidence in his 5-year revival plan.
• Thursday, Southfield-based auto supplier Lear Corp. won approval to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy after just a 4-month stay. Its order backlog is $1.3 billion and employment is 75,000 people.
Go ahead, take a quick sip in celebration; we won’t send you off to the funny farm. Just put the juice quickly back in the cabinet, for a hard road and many dangers lie ahead.
Detroit Free Press: The good, the odd, the testy in eventful week
BY MARK PHELAN
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
The most welcome surprise in Chrysler-Fiat's 5-year plan?
The nifty little 500 city car will proudly wear a Fiat badge when it goes on sale in Chrysler dealerships in early 2011.
Widespread reports said the cool little car would have no brand name, selling simply as "the 500." Conventional wisdom held that Americans would not buy a Fiat, scared off by the dreadful quality that ran the automaker out of the United States a generation ago.
Please. Most of us can barely remember who won the World Series last year.
Detroit Free Press: GM seeks new Opel CEO
By TIM HIGGINS
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER
In a leadership shakeup of its European division, Bob Lutz is being made chairman of Opel’s supervisory board while the automaker looks for a new Opel CEO.
Following GM’s decision this week to keep its Opel division, the company announced today that Carl-Peter Forster, the head of Opel, is leaving his position and will help advise GM as it looks for a new chief.
GM said it is immediately conducting an external search for the new leader and will consult with representatives of the European Employees Forum.
Detroit Free Press: Chinese CEO invests in Detroit area
BY CAROL CAIN
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
The way Tianbou Zhou sees it, Detroit is the best place to grow his Bengbu, China-based auto components business.
He's putting his money where his mouth is. Tempo Group, which has operations in Canton, partnered with the Chinese government and China's Capital Iron & Steel Co. to purchase Delphi's brake and transmission business in a deal valued at nearly $100 million.
Capital Iron & Steel purchased a 51% stake, Tempo bought a 24% stake and the Beijing government owns the remaining 25%. The Delphi businesses will be owned by a new Chinese company called BeijingWest Industries Co. Ltd., based in Beijing.
Detroit Free Press: Credit shortage threatens supplier growth
BY SUSAN TOMPOR
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
As the U.S. economy ramps up for the recovery, we find ourselves creeping up against another roadblock.
Where exactly will auto suppliers - as well as other manufacturers and companies in the Midwest - find the money to borrow to build new goods and hire back some workers to fill new orders?
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The end of the Great Recession is a welcome sight. But business won't be back to normal soon. Instead, you'll hear executives like Michael J. Alcala, who runs AZ Automotive Corp. in Center Line, talking up the "new normal."
Detroit Free Press: Judge limits Blue Cross Medicare rate hike
By PATRICIA ANSTETT
FREE PRESS MEDICAL WRITER
An independent hearing judge today ruled that Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan only should raise its supplemental Medicare rates by 3.8%, not the 36.7% it had sought.
The final rate hike will be determined by Ken Ross, the state's insurance commissioner.
Ross has until Dec. 6 to make the final decision, unless appeals are filed. The rate hikes could take effect as early as Feb. 1.
Detroit News
Detroit Free Press: 'We can now put Detroit back on the right path,' Bing says
BY JOHN WISELY, SUZETTE HACKNEY and CECIL ANGEL
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
As results poured in Tuesday evening giving Mayor Dave Bing a full 4-year term, the basketball Hall of Famer sat on a couch with his wife watching the HBO documentary about President Barack Obama's ascension to the White House.
The two sat close and whispered, with their two daughters and some close friends nearby. The quiet time was a respite for Bing after a campaign that covered four elections in eight months. He defeated his challenger 58% to 42%.
He now moves on to try to steer the city through its most difficult financial crisis since the Great Depression.
Time: Can Detroit's First Openly Gay Pol Save the City?
By Steven Gray
Just one week ago, Charles Pugh was poised to become not only Detroit's first openly gay elected official, but its city council president when voters here go to the polls Tuesday. But the flashy former television reporter has an unpleasant new distinction: Pugh recently acknowledged that his three-story home near downtown Detroit has been foreclosed, raising serious questions about his business acumen at a time when this city is on the brink of financial collapse.
Those revelations, as well as the disclosure that he failed to pay rent on an apartment at several points earlier this decade, have hardly helped Pugh's candidacy. In recent days, the editorial boards of both the Detroit Free Press and the Detroit News pulled their endorsements of him. (The Free Press wrote: "It's simply unreasonable for Detroiters to trust him with their city's finances after he so negligently managed his own.") Pugh dismisses the criticism, and says his financial troubles will actually endear him to voters in a city experiencing some of the most extreme effects of the national real estate crisis. "This is a personal issue I'm dealing with. The city council doesn't pay Detroit's bills," he says, adding, "So I'm very qualified for this job."
Other candidates might not recover from such a late hiccup, but Pugh, 38, has spent much of his life defying the odds.
Detroit Free Press: Did Manoogian Mansion tapes vanish?
BY BEN SCHMITT, JOE SWICKARD and DAVID ASHENFELTER
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITERS
On a spring day in 2003, State Police detectives headed out of Detroit police headquarters with a box of evidence that had them wondering whether they might unlock the truth of a rumored wild party at the Manoogian Mansion.
But they never found out.
As they pressed the down button on an elevator and tried to leave, Detroit police executives confronted them and refused to let the evidence -- a cache of 911 dispatch tapes or cops' computer files -- out of the building, according to never-disclosed testimony obtained by the Free Press.
A day later, when State Police went back to a vault where both sides had agreed to store the 36 tapes in a sealed box, the investigators found the seal broken and 30 tapes missing, according to the testimony.
Detroit Free Press: Time's 'Committee to Save Detroit' photo left out these proven leaders
By ROCHELLE RILEY
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
As part of its inaugural coverage of what's happening to Motown, Time magazine published a photo of eight people it dubbed "The Committee to Save Detroit."
The group did not include any black males, and I wondered aloud: Why?
Detroit Free Press: Muslim leader's shooting death discussed at Detroit town hall meeting
By NIRAJ WARIKOO
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER
About 200 metro Detroiters attended a town hall meeting Friday night in a Detroit mosque to urge unity and justice in the death of Luqman Ameen Abdullah, a Muslim leader killed last week in a shootout with FBI agents.
Speakers on a panel at the meeting expressed concerns about the use of undercover agents by the FBI in the case of Abdullah, who was head of Masjid Al-Haqq mosque in Detroit. After a two-year investigation by undercover agents, Abdullah was shot dead Oct. 28 by agents after he allegedly opened fire first, killing a police dog, according to federal officials.
"You can not become paranoid," Ron Scott, head of the Detroit Coalition Against Police Brutality, told the crowd inside the Muslim Center mosque in Detroit. "Let us not become suspicious of each other."
Detroit Free Press: Forbes: Detroit is nation's 12th safest city
BY MARK W. SMITH
FREE PRESS WEB EDITOR
Just six months after naming Detroit the most dangerous city in the United States, Forbes magazine has placed the Motor City 12th in a list of the nation's safest cities.
The magazine tapped Minneapolis as the nation's safest city, followed by Milwaukee, Portland, Ore., Boston and Seattle.
The latest list places Detroit ahead of Chicago (No. 15), Pittsburgh (No. 18) and Los Angeles (No. 19) on a scale of safety.
Detroit Free Press: Forbes: Detroit 2nd most toxic area
BY MARK W. SMITH
FREE PRESS WEB EDITOR
Less than a week after naming metro Detroit the nation's 12th safest metropolitan area, the magazine has another honor for the Motor City.
According to Forbes, the Detroit area is the second most toxic metropolitan area in the United States.
The only city deemed more toxic was Atlanta. Las Vegas was tapped as the least toxic.
Videos and Photo Galleries
Detroit Free Press: WWJ-TV's Carol Cain talks to Gov. Granholm
WWJ-TV 's Michigan Matters host Carol Cain talks in-depth to Gov. Jennifer Granholm about Michigan's direction and her future plans. Granholm discusses her controversial vetoes and the debate surrounding Michigan's film incentives to attract movie productions. The show aired at 11 a.m. today. The show aired today on WWJ TV.
Detroit Free Press: Meet the new Detroit City Council
Voters ushered in many new faces to the council including President Charles Pugh.
Metromix: Youmacon 2009
The annual Youmacon anime convention held at the Hyatt Regency in Dearborn ran Thursday through Sunday and brought out voice actors, costumed fans and vendors hawking everything from comic books to contact lenses.
On The Lighter Side
Detroit Free Press: Zoo finds its footing under society control
BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
For a telling Detroit example of how a public-private partnership can save and improve a regional asset that government can no longer afford, look no further than where the wild things are.
The Detroit Zoo.
It was little more than a year ago that voters in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties approved a property tax levy of 0.1 mill, or about $10 a year on a house worth $200,000, to pay for operations of the Detroit Zoo, which had previously been mainly the responsibility of the cash-strapped City of Detroit.
So how's the zoo doing now?
Detroit Free Press: Detroit young poets win national award
BY CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Two young Detroit poets flew to Washington to meet with first lady Michelle Obama at the White House on Wednesday to accept a national arts award.
The students represented Citywide Poets, an after-school program in Detroit. It was one of 15 youth arts and humanities programs selected to receive the prestigious 2009 Coming Up Taller Award and $1,000.
Myriha Burton, a senior at Cass Tech High, and Lena Cintron, a 2009 graduate of Cass Tech and University of Michigan student, attended the ceremony. On Tuesday, Cintron recited two poems at the Kennedy Center.
Detroit Free Press: Marching bands to take the field at state finals
BY PEGGY WALSH-SARNECKI
FREE PRESS EDUCATION WRITER
Forty of the top high school marching bands in the state are to be on Ford Field in Detroit today for the Michigan Competing Band Association's state finals.
The bands qualified for the final on the basis of their scores in previous contests throughout the fall.
Metro Detroit bands finishing at the top of their categories, based on school size, last year included Plymouth-Canton, Lake Orion and West Bloomfield in Flight I, Walled Lake Central and L'Anse Creuse in Flight II and Ferndale and Farmington Harrison in Flight III.
I used to judge for this association, which means I know that the results can be found here.